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Character of the Season
Once known as the Butcher of Whitebrim, he's now The Butcher of Dygra, stepping forward as the first created demigod of the Ancients. There is no question that Astaroth casts an intimidating silhouette. Tall, domineering and dangerous, if looks could kill you'd be dead already, but to get up close and personal with the Grounds' resident cannibal tells a much different story. Dripping with charm and clad in only the finest attire, Asta is a gentleman monster, as polite as they come and committed to his role as security for the Dusklight and those who have earned his loyalty. Be careful of that smile, though - those teeth are sharp.
Congratulations, Asta!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
The rain beats heavily on Finch's back, plastering his dark hair to his pale face, but he strolls through the narrow rows of the port like it's a nice stroll on a summer's day. The recent unyielding, unending downpour of the sluggish start to Flowerbirth has made Rae's Fingers a desolately uninhabitable place to linger, the stone walls slick and floor unforgiving. The etched markings on the wall had slid under his fingers but led him true, wading through an inch of dark, murky water, towards Jack's promised cache, the rusted lock somehow even more rusted and stagnant and difficult than the last. When Finch coaxed it open -- because of course he had, though his fingers were shaking from the cold -- it was, as promised, totally empty and devoid of maps, coin, or any other treasure.
It was a soundly miserable process, one which lead him to think this was just an elaborate punishment Jack set up for him rather than any real quest to gather information.
Rain drips down the hollows of his cheek, dancing down the line of his jagged scar before linking on his jaw. He could be hurrying somewhere, back to his little hole in the wall to get dried off, but what's the point? He's only going to get wet again. Under him, his feet splash soundlessly through puddles, the excess of water squelching miserably into already-soaked socks and settling in between his toes. Lithe, scarred, and slightly-scraped fingers rub the water out of his eyes as he sighs, wondering if he was cursed from birth or just an unlucky bastard.
It's not a life he would wish upon anyone. Though, this last foray was so miserable, it would be enough to scare off any aspiring thief with grand dreams about the life. With that, he snorts out a little laugh under his breath, thinking of those two troublemaking twins. He can imagine their shouting voices echoing down the Fingers, complaining about the damp and slipperiness, but having a grand time of it anyway.
He hopes those two have come to their senses, but they probably haven't.
Today's shenanigans are fairly innocuous at least, given the rain; Carlo is learning that people don't like to linger about outside when there's a downpour, and non-existent pockets are difficult to practice picking, so he and his brother are forced to find other ways to amuse themselves. Ways that don't involve elaborate schemes for ice cream, pretending to be anyone else's brother, or climbing the sides of buildings.
The rain slicker he wears is far too large, folded several times at the sleeves and with the hem fanned out around him where he's crouched on the boards, the hood pulled so far over his head so as to make it look like he's wearing a bucket beneath it. It's also a cheerful green in colour, making him rather impossible to miss, but that's fine today.
"I think I've done it," he announces to Calan with a quick smile, folding the last bit of wax paper to present to his twin their entertainment for the day: a serviceable paper boat. "Let's give it a maiden voyage." Holding it out for his brother to do the honours, he points towards a quick-running stream of water snaking vaguely downwards beside them.
If Carlo’s lime-green slicker doesn’t give away their position from halfway across Kaiholo Port, Calan’s identical yellow one certainly does. The sleeves have been rolled back with considerably less success than his brother’s, leaving damp cuffs to slip against his wrists whenever he moves, and the hood keeps falling low enough over his eyes that he has to tip his whole head back to see properly. It’s irritating, but not irritating enough to ruin the operation.
At the sight of the little boat, any complaint vanishes behind a toothy grin. Calan accepts it with both hands, far more delicately than he's ever held anything that isn't breakable, stolen, or liable to bite him, and lowers it toward the rushing ribbon of rainwater besides the boards. He doesn't let it go straight away, but instead pinches the tiny mast Carlo has folded into place. Hunching close beneath his dripping hood, he clears his throat with the solemn importance of someone addressing a crowd rather than a small scrap of wax paper. "Now listen," he tells it quietly. "You're goin' into dangerous waters. There'll be whirlpools, probably pirates, and defintely sewer monsters. Don't trust anybody wearin' a hat bigger than theirs should be, and if you find treasure, bring it back here since we're your captains." Then, with a sharp little flick of his fingers, Calan releases the mast.
"Godspeed," he calls after it, drawing the word out as the boat is wooooooooooooooshed forward, bobbing madly over the uneven boards and bouncing down the stream as though it’s already discovered something important. Calan rises into a crouch to follow it, one hand shoving his hood back from his eyes as he squints after its bright little voyage. "That’s actually a really good boat," he tells Carlo, sounding almost surprised by it. "I bet it finds all sorts of treasure."
Finch spies two rain-slickered figures by the water and grins to himself, despite the absolutely horrible shit day he's been having and the pain that races through his heart at the sight. Him and another, back when they were that small, used to race paper boats down that stream and come up with stories that attributed their victories. One boat was blessed, the other was cursed, and they'd bicker until the two ended up rolling around in the water, trying to sit on the other's back, thoroughly and utterly soaked.
He breathes through the memory like someone would a stab wound, and all pain triggered immediately flees and is replaced with surprise as one adjusts their hood to reveal an all-too familiar mischievous face. Someone up there had to be laughing at him, right? He scowls at the odds, curing whoever had the sense of humor to send them in his direction just as he was wondering about them, and wearing the shadows of a memory no less.
Finch should keep walking. If he approached them, he'd definitely be veering too far into creeper territory, after approaching them at the Feast. Nope, he was going to keep walking and get warm and dry in his own little hole-in-the-wall apartment and not think about them anymore. He isn't their brother, even though he'd worn that title for a moment. It didn't count. But they could catch a cold in this weather, and someone really should make sure they were alright.
He sighs, scrubbing his hands down his exhausted face. Ambling forward, silent even as his feet drops through puddles on the ground, he calls out, "You know, your boats will last longer if you melt some candle wax on 'em."
Beaming to hear Calan's motivational speech, Carlo nods along as if some tiny crew aboard their paper boat might be around to listen. "And make sure you don't talk to any boats you don't know!" He calls in the wake of the little vessel; something their fathers had told them prior to every outing and something that feels like sound advice, even if they've so far ignored it every single time. Wondering what state their boat will be in if they ever see it again, he tears his gaze away from its ride down the stream and back towards his twin.
"Right? I do think we were supposed to give it a name, though. Don't all the best boats have names?" His voice is loud enough to carry to Finch even before the older thief speaks, but when he does Carlo is immediately straightening up from his crouch and plastering an innocent expression onto his face; a knee-jerk reaction at being caught in public at this point.
He relaxes to see the owner of the voice (though not by much) and lifts his chin defiantly to smile at Finch. "This one was made of wax paper," he announces. "The others that weren't already sank and drowned." This one, unbeknownst to Carlo, has gotten snagged on a nearby bit of debris, but until he realises that it's still, in his mind, having the time of its little nautical life.
Calan’s face scrunches up immediately, not because Carlo is wrong, but because he’s so right that it feels like they’ve failed some ancient and obvious rule of boats. Of course the best ones have names. Probably the bad ones have names too, but those are likely things like The Damp Mistake or Father Said No, and neither of those seems grand enough for a wax paper vessel currently braving Kaiholo Port’s very dangerous gutter system. "What about..." he begins, drawing the words out as he squints after their boat with the full severity of someone naming a ship, a kingdom, and possibly a future enemy all at once. "Boaty McBoatface?"
This, naturally, is when Finch interrupts, and Calan’s shoulders rise almost to his ears as he turns beneath the sagging yellow hood, trying to look as if he and Carlo have been doing something deeply respectable this entire time. It doesn’t quite work, mostly because rainwater is dripping off the end of his nose and the grin he’s trying to hide is pulling hard at one side of his mouth. "We know," he says, nodding with immediate and triumphant agreement as if Finch has merely confirmed their own genius rather than offered advice.
For proof, Calan turns toward the stream, already lifting one hand to point after their heroic, unsinkable vessel, only to find that she has not made it more than a few feet before lodging herself against a sad little barricade of shells and seaweed. His expression falls into a frown of pure professional disappointment, and then he springs up from his crouch, splashing down the slick boards after her before any less loyal captain can declare the voyage finished. "Temporary pause," he calls back over his shoulder, as though this is a common nautical term. With one careful finger, he frees the boat from the mess and gives her a helpful nudge back into the rushing water, but the rain has its own ideas. The little boat wobbles, spins, and goes wombling straight toward a storm drain before slipping neatly through the grate and vanishing into the dark below.
Calan stops dead above it, both hands braced on his knees as he bends down and twists his head, trying to see into the black gaps beneath the metal. For half a second, it looks as if tragedy might be considered. Then his face lights up beneath the yellow hood, bright and certain and absolutely unwilling to accept defeat when a better story is available. "She’s gone into the Fingers for treasure!" he announces, loud enough for the drain, Carlo, Finch, and any sewer monsters to hear.
The grin that spreads across Finch's face strays close to fondness as the twins crow their expertise in the ways of little wax-paper boats, Boaty McBoatface off on a grand adventure in the fingers where she will undoubtably make her way to many exciting places and collect mounds of treasure. For her sake, he hopes she doesn't happen to stumble upon one of Jack's caches and decide to try her little boatly luck by filling her wax-paper hull with secrets. He'd hate to have competition in the indebted-to-Jack-Barclay department and imagined the twins would be rather heartbroken to see her crushed under the heel of someone's boot for thievery.
The bright yellow slickers adorning the twins are unmissable in the bleak grey of the pounding storm, though they haven't seemed to provide much protection overall. With the water dripping down their faces onto innocent (if not slightly too innocent), they look like two normal kiddos out splashing in the puddles. Finch fights the urge to ask if their fathers know where they are, and if someone's waiting for them back home with a roaring fire an dry clothing, but that sounds a little too close to boring-adult stuff. And besides, the two little monsters kneeling over the dark, black gutter would probably have some sort of excuse in their back pocket about how they're immune to rain because of their magical garden baby properties. Or something. Or they would just skitter away or kick him in the shin again, and the former wasn't conducive to making sure they stayed safe, and the latter wasn't a desirable outcome for the slippery thief either.
"Did you cast a sewer monster protection charm on her before you let her go?" Finch adds, stalking over to cast his gaze into the dark, unknowable depths he had just emerged from. The boat had thoroughly disappeared from site, but he let his imagination run alongside the twins', picturing the boat's determined sailing wobble floating down that damp and slippery place. "And teach her thieves' cant? You can't find treasure in the Fingers without thieves' cant."
"Never has there been a vessel with a finer name!" Carlo exclaims of Boaty McBoatFace, and he pushes the hood of his green slicker back enough to peer up at Finch as if to ask if that is acceptable to him as well, or if he has any further scrutiny to offer their tiny adventurer as it's swallowed by the storm drain and makes for slimier pastures. It turns out he does have more advice to offer, and Carlo is learning that said advice, when it comes from Finch, oscillates wildly between incredibly helpful and entirely redundant. Case in point:
"Of course we cast sewer monster protection," he says, drawing out the single syllable in course to drill the point home. "And pirate protection, and storm protection. She doesn't need kraken protection though - she already has that." By virtue of one of their fathers being able to assume the betentacled shape whenever he pleases, you see. The bit about the thieves' cant, though, that's where things hit a snag.
Glancing at Calan and shoving his hands into the too-deep pockets of his slicker, he drops surreptitiously back to stand with his twin as though, between them, they'll be able to tell whether Finch speaks The Bullshit or if what he says has merit. "Thieves can't what?" he asks, like this is an obvious response to what their boat might need to navigate Rae's Fingers.
Calan bobs his head with firm agreement the moment Carlo starts listing protections, because obviously they haven’t sent Boaty McBoatface into the damp underworld without proper magical preparation. Honestly, it’s almost insulting that Finch would think so. She might be small, and she might have recently been stuck on seaweed, but that doesn’t mean she’s unprepared for the dangers of glory. "Extra sewer monster protection," he adds, holding up one finger as if this is an important legal correction. "Because some of them might be baby sewer monsters, and regular sewer monster protection might only work on grown-ups. You have to think about these things."
But then Carlo glances at him, and Calan glances right back, both of them drawn into the same sharp little pause. Thieves’ cant sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing grown-ups say when they want children to admit they don’t know something, and Calan narrows his eyes beneath the drooping edge of his hood and tilts his head at Finch, trying to decide whether this is real advice, a trick, or some special thief grammar he’ll have to pretend he knew already.
"And what does it matter what thieves can’t do if she’s a boat?" he asks at last, his voice full of reasonable suspicion.
Finch nods very, very seriously as he's informed on their particular specifications of sewer monster protections. Maybe he'd commission them for a spell for him the next time he had to lurk down there to bust open another empty cache just to confirm to Jack they were, in fact, empty, and yes, he did have a miserable time down there (which he thinks might be the true intention for theses missions).
The two rain-slickered budding thieves exchange a glance of twin telepathy that sends a shocking jolt of pain-soaked memories through Finch's fingers, but it's quickly overcome with fondness as the two debate what thieves can, can't, or could do to a little boat hunting for treasure. He did kind of shoot himself in the foot here, opening up another mystery for them to discovery in his innocuous question, and if his intention was to drive them away from a horrifying trauma-filled life of crime, providing them with more thiefly information was certainly not the way to go.
But, if he didn't, perhaps two curious little plant-babies would follow the boat down to the Fingers to see what thieves can't/can/could/couldn't do to it, and that would be bad. Because if there's anything thieves can do, it's build an underground maze of sewers that turn children into skeletons.
He sighs, scrubbing rain off his face with one dirt-shmutzed hand, likely leaving behind a residue of grime (authentic from the Fingers!). Gods. He had the worst luck in the world.
"Not thieves can't," He explains, trying to give his best No Bullshit tone so the twins wouldn't call foul play. "Thieves' Cant. Proper noun. It's the way thieves navigate the Fingers without getting lost or dying." Well, that still happened. "It's not foolproof. And a lot of people leave bad signs to lead others in the wrong direction, so you've gotta be really good at reading it. And," He cuts off whatever the two could say, from questions to pleas to silly songs (it could happen), "You've gotta be born knowing how to read it. It's like getting your picks when you were born from the canal. Only born thieves can know it. Sorry." Finch shrugs a skinny shoulder.
